Undercover audio of a Tyson employee reveals "free-range" chicken is meaningless

[mucifer]

Last fall, an undercover investigator worked for two months at a Virginia farm outside Richmond that raises chickens on contract for Tyson Foods, America’s largest chicken company. During their short stint on behalf of the Washington, DC-based animal rights group Animal Outlook, the investigator documented hours upon hours of the typical horrors found on chicken factory farms: tens of thousands of birds stuffed into dark warehouse-sized barns, many of them severely injured with gruesome lesions, injuries, and deformities. At more than one point, birds are deprived of feed or water, and there was also a rat infestation and footage of bugs crawling in the chickens’ feed.

The conditions are visibly at odds with Tyson’s advertising claims that it treats animals humanely and raises “happy” and “healthy” chickens.

“It’s just a living nightmare,” the investigator, who requested anonymity due to the covert nature of undercover investigations, told Vox. “A video just does not do it any justice.”

Despite the horrific findings, they’re not all that different from the conditions documented at other farms that raise chickens for Tyson and Tyson’s competitors. But the investigation’s most revealing finding had nothing to do with the conditions of the estimated 750,000 chickens raised annually at the Jetersville, Virginia, facility. Instead, it emerged from a surprisingly candid conversation the investigator secretly recorded between the farm manager and a Tyson Foods “broiler technician advisor,” who worked with Tyson chicken farms in the area. In the video recording, the technician freely acknowledged that the chicken industry’s “free-range” labels were essentially meaningless — a rare instance of an industry insider saying the quiet part out loud.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23724740/tyson-chicken-free-range-humanewashing-investigation-animal-cruelty

[Bayard]

1. Damn!

Companies that raise meat chickens, are way different than companies raising egg-laying chickens. Mr. Bayard worked for years for a contractor to Cal-Maine, largest egg producer in the country. Unhappy chickens don't lay eggs. But, I don't know how they were handled after their egg-laying days were done, and they were going to slaughter.

[moniss]

2. I always encourage people who live where they

have rural areas within a reasonable drive to seek out people who have a chicken coop and are selling fresh eggs. Not only will everything you make taste better but you'll be doing a small part in supporting local small ag. You can do internet searches for local small ag producers in your area. You can also just take a relaxing drive or two and just wander the back roads and look for the signs that say Fresh Eggs. A local farmer's market is also a good place to go, have a cup of coffee and talk to the folks with stands about who is doing what and you might find out that way. Support your local ag as much as you can. Many even have web sites and in some areas you may find some doing home delivery.

[flvegan]

4. "Unhappy chickens don't lay eggs."

No disrespect to Mr. Bayard nor his work experience, but you might want to look up the term "battery hens" and see how "happy" they are. Depending on who you believe, somewhere between 80 - 90% of eggs produced in this country are done via hens kept in battery cages.

Now you know.

[Bayard]

5. What are battery cages?

In the HUGE barns where he worked, the hens were all down running around on the floor during the day, and then back up at night.

We actually have our own chickens, and currently getting 10 to 14 eggs a day.

[flvegan]

6. Take a sheet of paper, tear it in half.

That's all the space an egg laying hen has her whole life. Stacked hundreds of cages long, several cages high.

I would ask you to investigate yourself. I'm well known to be highly biased, albeit factual.

[Envirogal]

3. Quit supporting factory farms!

It’s so disgusting that the factory farm industry lies to the public while marketing themselves under “humane” standards. They are cowards and opportunists that are too scared to show the public exactly the cruel and atrocious standard operating procedures they chose to adopt.

And yet, decades of these kinds of exposes show over and over again show us the horrors of the reality of the meat industry but the public largely ignores or shrugs off the atrocities they financially and gastronomically support.

The people who go undercover to witness and record these conditions are true heroes.